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Emily Shao

PartnerBay Area

Pioneers the transition to the future of mobility, navigating organizations through disruptions in technology, business models, and sustainability

Emily is a leader within McKinsey’s Advanced Industries and Travel, Logistics & Infrastructure Practices. She is also a core leader of the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility, and is at the forefront of our mobility disruptor sector. She advises organizations on a range of strategic and operational topics, including developing strategic roadmaps, creating equity stories, accelerating product launch, and driving operational efficiency and effectiveness. Emily serves incumbents, disruptors, start-ups, and investors on future of mobility topics.

Emily’s recent client projects include the following:

  • accelerating a flagship product launch for an electric-vehicle start-up via control tower and execution planning across quality, engineering, supply chain, organization and culture areas, as well as the program management office
  • leading a strategic partnership and go-to-market “war room” for a sustainability disruptor, which resulted in contracts to maximize production capacity for the next three years
  • developing a future-of-mobility strategy for an industrial incumbent, unlocking access to more than $100 billion in its total addressable market by 2030
  • creating equity stories for multiple disruptors, including an electrification start-up, a lidar (laser identification and detection and ranging) company, and urban air-mobility disruptor, an autonomous trucking group, and a micromobility company, which led to successful fundraising rounds and IPOs
  • building a predictive-maintenance, advanced-analytics program at a major automotive-components supplier, creating the equivalent of 60 percent total cost reduction

Prior to joining McKinsey, Emily also worked as a program manager at an autonomous vehicle start-up. Outside of work, she enjoys spending time with her husband and son.

Published work

Unlocking the industrial potential of robotics and automation,” McKinsey & Company, January 2023

Mobility investments in the next normal,” McKinsey & Company, March 2021

Education

Harvard Business School
MBA

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
BS, mechanical engineering

MIT Sloan School of Management
BS, management science